On the road to change

Improvements scheduled for sections of K-Beach

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Billy McClintock watches Kevin Silvernale shovel snow away from a culvert along Kalifornsky Beach Road last Friday. The two men from Eagle River are here, employed as laborers, by the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities.
Photo by Joseph Robertia

Billy McClintock watches Kevin Silvernale shovel snow away from a culvert along Kalifornsky Beach Road last Friday. The two men from Eagle River are here, employed as laborers, by the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities.

Photo by Joseph Robertia

Two projects that would widen portions of Kalifornsky Beach Road and resurface some 16 miles of its length are waiting for funding by the Alaska Legislature.

Tom Young, design project manager for the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, said design work already is completed on one of the projects, and it has a good chance of being accomplished this summer if $4 million in Gov. Frank Murkowski’s 2006 supplemental spending request is approved.

“Our plan is to repave Mile 4.3 to Mile 11 this summer, but that will depend on when the money comes on line,” Young said.

If the money is available too late, DOT would put the project out for bid for construction next year, he said.

Surveyors currently are at work mapping out the other K-Beach Road project, one that would widen and repave two portions at either end of the Mile 4.3 to 11 paving job.

Between the Sterling Highway and Mile 4.3 of K-Beach and again from mile 11 to Bridge Access Road at Mile 16.2, DOT plans to widen the shoulders from the current two feet to six feet, which should make the sections of highway less hazardous.

About $11 million already has been appropriated for that project. However, that job won’t be ready for construction until 2007, Young said.

Those who use the thoroughfare are likely to welcome an improved road.

The owner of a K-Beach business thinks so.

“It would be nice for it to be paved,” said Sheryl Groves, who owns Robinson’s Mini Mall at Mile 14.5. “There are potholes every time there’s a good, hard freeze.”

Widening the shoulders, she added, “would probably help some, too.”

“I think it would be a good thing to make for easier and safer access for everybody,” he said.

The Mile 4.3 to 11 paving job is one of three road jobs within the Kenai Area Roads Project.

Still in design phases are improvements to Oil Well Road in Ninilchik and the North Fork Road at Anchor Point.